AREDN Mesh

August 2018 Bill Moldt K4LV Culver City ARES

A.R.E.D.N., short for the Amateur Radio Emergency Data Network, is a software project that enables commercial WIFI equipment to use Amateur Radio frequencies during emergency scenarios. The data network created with these radios (or nodes) is called a “mesh”, in that nodes are seamlessly added and removed automatically in a self-healing fashion without interruption of services.

Culver City ARES currently has it’s own 5.8GHz AREDN mesh “island”, which has been growing in functionality. Efforts are underway to connect our local area network with other AREDN radios (or nodes) in the Greater Los Angeles area as well. With this high speed data network, CCARES is better prepared to support CERT and other Emergency Response Organizations when the need arises.

What’s the big picture?

The above image gives the general idea of how things are connected, though we have more AREDN nodes than shown here. If internet and cell phones were to go down or become intermittent during an incident, our network will still be able to provide reliable digital communication services. Imagine CCARES, CERT, and other Emergency Service users at an incident command location connecting their pre-existing computers, tablets, and cell phones to WIFI (seen in red above) and accessing the services in the next section. Pretty neat, huh?

Here are a few things we can do with AREDN right now!

Chat rooms

File sharing

Audio/Video conference rooms

Web cameras

VoIP telephony w/ voicemail

Website hosting

Winlink Email / ICS forms

The more AREDN nodes we have connected, the more robust our network capabilities will be. Please reach out to us at info@ccares.net if you’re in the vicinity of Culver City and would like to learn more or even be a part of our AREDN mesh network!